Last call for state parties?

State parties are seeing financial strain as they compete with outside groups for cash. | AP Photo

The Association of State Democratic Chairs passed a unanimous resolution in November, endorsing a series of fixes to those problems. They’re hoping the full DNC will consider the measure this month. Those proposals include allowing state parties more flexibility in running direct mail, phone banking and field programs on behalf of federal campaigns.

The 2013 Republican National Committee autopsy report commissioned after the 2012 election came to a similar conclusion. “State parties are suffering the most under the current campaign finance laws. It is critical that we provide more support to state parties to allow them to do more with scarcer resources in the current environment,” the report said.

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“If we don’t do this — and pass some of these common-sense reforms — in my opinion, political parties are going to go the way of the dinosaur,” said Martin, the DFL chairman and head of the ASDC’s Committee on Campaign Finance Reform.

But any changes or tweaks to current election law need to made by Congress — which created the rules in the first place. And legislation on any campaign finance issues has gone nowhere in the past several years.

Ironically, until Congress closed a key campaign finance loophole in the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance overhaul, most state parties were flush with cash.

The loophole allowed essentially unlimited funds known as soft money to be raised by the national political parties to be spent on party building activities and issue ads. Between 1992 and 2002, soft money fundraising for both parties skyrocketed — going from from $86 million to nearly $500 million. Much of that cash was spent through state and local party organizations.

In closing the soft-money loophole, the law created a complicated system of rules that state parties had to abide by when working on federal elections.

Under the rules, for example, state-party run phone banks for federal candidates had to be staffed only by volunteers. They could make calls only for presidential elections — not congressional races. Mail, campaign literature and get-out-the-vote operations around federal races were regulated by similarly strict rules, conditions and requirements regulating volunteer time, coordination with the national party and what kind of funds could be spent.

Those rules seem almost quaint now.

The Supreme Court essentially cracked open the door to a different kind of soft money in 2010. In the Citizens United ruling and several subsequent court and administration decisions, unlimited cash was again permitted to flow into the system — but this time it had to be spent by independent groups, not local parties. Super PACs and nonprofits like American Crossroads, Restore Our Future and Priorities USA Action became an integral part of the campaign finance landscape.

That has changed the nature of politics in some states.

“There’s nobody refereeing the fights,” said Thomas Mills, a North Carolina-based political consultant and observer who has worked on local, state and presidential races. “We’re not seeing party bosses or strong chairs that can try to work out deals behind closed doors to keep it from breaking out into the public.”

“The super PACs have, frankly, an easier sell,” Florida Democratic Party executive director Scott Arceneaux said about the changes in campaign finance law. That sell is: “Invest in us, and we’re going to go on television and say these horrible things about Republicans.

“We do voter registrations, we do vote-by-mail campaigns,” said Arceneaux. “We do a lot of things that are a little bit less sexy but no less important.”